Perhaps the biggest question is whether Obamacare has reduced the number of bankruptcies due to medical debt. Well, this is a complicated question to ask. Money is a fungible form of payment, which is to say that if I owe you and two other people $30 each, and I only have $50 to pay all my debts, none of the debts are individually unaffordable, but the combination of my debt is unaffordable in the aggregate. So, if one of those debts is to a medical provider, it’s disputable whether I can say that my ensuing bankruptcy was due to the medical debt. And this is the most common scenario. However, medical-related bankruptcies continue to be a problem, even though they have gone down significantly in Massachusetts, which implemented Romneycare in 2006, after which Obamacare was modeled. On the other hand, Massachusetts has a pretty comprehensive array healthcare safety nets, which the nation as a whole lacks, and the rate of underinsured (folks with lower overall coverage or higher deductibles) has been going up, probably due to increased premiums, which may explain why the rate of medical bankruptcies of insured has is far from dropping.

I’ve been trying to end this on a bright note, and I’m not sure I have a relevant one, so here’s a somewhat relevant one: overall, bankruptcy rates are decreasing in the US, but this trend is not imputable to Obamacare. On the other hand, Canadian bankruptcy rates have been steadily trending up, although they remain lower than ours. That makes me happy in a nya-na-nya-na-nyaaa-naa kind of way. Just kidding. I love our hat. And, regarding Obamacare, it’s a mixed bag, and it’s not going anywhere, so we’ll just have to wait and see.